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The answer is soooo obvious…. or is it?

There’s a crowded room of OSS experts, a room filled with serious intellectual horsepower. You might be a virtu-OSS-o, but you surely know that there’s still so much to be learnt from those around you. You have the chance to unlock the experiences and insights of your esteemed colleagues. But how? The answer might seem to be obvious. You do so by asking questions. Lots of questions.

But that obvious answer might have just one little unexpected twist.

Do you ask:

Ego questions – questions that demonstrate how clever you are (and thus prove to the other experts that you too are an expert); OR

Embarrassing questions – questions that could potentially embarrass you (and demonstrate major deficiencies in your knowledge, perhaps suggesting that you’re not as much of as expert as everyone else)

I’ve been in those rooms and heard the questions, as you have too no doubt. What do you think the ratio of ego to embarrassing would typically be? 10 to 1? 20 to 1?

The problem with the ego questions is that they can be so specific to the context of a few that they end up steering the conversations to the depths of technology hell (of course they can also end up inspiring / enlightening too, so I’m generalising here).

But have you observed that the very best in our industry happen to ask a lot of embarrassing questions?

A quote by Ramit Sethi splices in brilliantly here, “The very best ask lots of questions. 3 questions I almost never hear: (1) “Just a second. If you don’t mind me asking, how did you get to that?” (2) “I’m not sure I understand the conclusion — can you walk me through that?” (3) “How did you see that answer?” Ask these questions and stop worrying about being embarrassed. How else are you going to learn?”

Just for laughs, next time you’re at one of these events (and I notice that TM Forum Live is coming up in May), try to guess what the ego to embarrassing ratio might be there and which set of questions are spawning the more interesting / insightful / helpful conversations.